6 Terrible Mistakes of PPC Experts in Work with Call Tracking Services

What is your favorite horror movie? We prefer The Shining. Isolated hotel, crazy writer and very tense atmosphere of Stanley Kubrick’s directing style don’t leave anybody calm. However, we know something, even scarier than The Shining. Yes, we’re talking about horrible mistakes in work with call tracking. They are not as fictional as the story of Stephen King. And they often happen in real life of PPC experts. So to prevent the common mistakes in work with call tracking services, we prepared this comprehensive post. Take a comfortable seat, coffee and enjoy the ̶w̶a̶t̶c̶h̶i̶n̶g̶  reading;) Here’s Jonhny.

Mistake №1. Tracking total number of calls without dividing them into target and non-targeted

Increasing total number of calls is supposed to be the main task of call tracking service. But what if the company sells furniture, but often gets calls from customers who want to buy clothes? Do all calls matter for the business?

Of course, not.

Let’s look at the example. Let’s say your client sells car tires but he doesn’t have rims. But he gave you unclear information and you started a wrong PPC campaign. Some keywords in your campaign attract customers who want to buy rims, but not car tires. The clients can’t find rims on your website and call you to clarify some information.

Eventually, your client gets a lot of calls, that’s why you think that your campaign is efficient. But actually, it doesn’t bring any tangible results. So you risk wasting client’s money on inefficient keywords.

How to avoid that?

The logical solution is to evaluate only target calls. After researching we found out that the length of target calls is usually longer. The conversations with random callers don’t last for a long time. Oftentimes call agents say something like “Sorry, we don’t have car tires, only rims”. In average, duration of this kind of conversations is approximately 30 seconds, not more.

Therefore, it’s essential to create reports on target calls.

What you should know as a true PPC expert

• Not all calls are from prospects.
• Without dividing call into groups you won’t learn if the ad campaign is efficient.

Action Steps

1. Specify the length of target call in Ringostat Project Settings.
2. View 6 call analytics reports.
3. Listen to non-targeted calls to understand the reason of callers’ mistakes and optimize PPC campaigns.

Mistake №2. Calculating ROMI based on all received calls

Why is it a bad idea to calculate ROMI based on all calls, you ask? Because if you consider repeated calls, you’ll never understand true advertising profitability.

If the company provides taxi or other urgent services, you can consider repeated calls to count ROMI. But when it comes to real estate, repeated sales happen very rarely, and sales cycle consists of few contacts from the client.

Knowing these specialties of different businesses, we transfer unique calls to Google Analytics as specific events.

What you should know as a true PPC expert

• Calculating ROMI based on all calls is definitely wrong.
• Considering repeated calls within sales cycle won’t show you real advertising profitability.

Action Steps

• Specify the duration of the sales cycle in Ringostat settings. Thus, you won’t see repeated and non-targeted calls in Target Call Goal Completions.
• Analyze unique calls as a separate category to get a complete picture of advertising efficiency.

Mistake №3. Incorrect calculating cost per lead

The marketing agency is efficient when it not only attracts target calls but also reduces the cost per lead. That’s why it’s crucial to properly calculate conversion rate. However, proper calculation is impossible if you don’t divide all marketing campaigns into groups and don’t conduct additional analysis. 

Let’s say Google Analytics shows that a specific advertising channel brings lots of conversions. It happened because people enjoyed huge discounts and bought 100 units.

But the good had a bad quality, so 70 buyers returned it. Google Analytics displays only data on your profit. Nevertheless, the company of your client lost money. But how can you find out this information in Google Analytics?

To receive more data, you need to use additional specific tools such as CRM system integrated with web analytics service.

Don’t forget that most customers prefer to call because it’s easier and faster than filling out online forms. Without call analytics, you won’t see reliable data.

What you should understand as true PPC expert

• You can’t correctly calculate ROMI without tracking and analyzing all advertising channels.

Action Steps

• Remedy analytics gaps integrating Ringostat with CRM systems via Webhooks or API.
• Find weaknesses of all communication channels.
• Ask a client for sending data on closed deals to analytics service in order to calculate correct ROMI.
• Optimize advertising campaigns according to received data.

Mistake №4. Ignoring all opportunities of call tracking

Thanks to call tracking, you may not only track missed calls but also understand the reason for losing them. Our experience shows that companies most often lose calls not because of the bad call center performance, but due to the wrong distribution of advertising by weekdays or time of the day. Let’s get back to our imaginary client who sells rims. He has a relevant and beneficial offer — 4 rins for the priсe of 3. He uses radio campaigns, but clients hear it in the off-hours of the call center. Ringostat custom report by weekdays will show the most frequent time of calls. According to received data, you may optimize advertising campaigns.

What you should know as a true PPC expert

• To improve the advertising efficiency, analytics of missed calls and tracking of managers’ performance are crucial.

Action Steps

• Work with reports by weekdays and time of the day at Ringostat
• Optimize advertising knowing when to boost ad impressions and when to reduce.

Mistake №5.  Keyword tracking is enough for full analytics

Working on Ringostat improvement, we were pretty surprised to clarify that some PPC experts guess that call tracking up to keywords is enough to analyze and optimize advertising. Definitely, it’s not true.

That’s why we have Ringostat multi-channel funnel reports to determine advertising sources bringing direct traffic.

The problem is some websites have a lot of conversions from direct traffic. But looking at multi-channel funnel reports you may clarify the ad channels which brought the customer to the website before a direct search.

What you should know as a true PPC expert

• If you track and optimize only keywords, you lose the opportunity to get a complete analytics and create an efficient ad campaign.

Action Step

Analyze report on multi-channel funnels to learn about which advertising sequences bring the conversions.

Mistake №6. Ignoring additional web analytics tools

The more data you have, the more exact your analytics you get —  is a golden rule of marketing. The problem is that using of omnichannel analytics systems isn’t appropriate for businesses with low customer traffic. In this case, to transfer data from GA, CRM system or call tracking to Google Spreadsheets is enough.

But if the company has high customer traffic, it’s certainly not.

Nowadays there are a lot of web analytics platforms that can solve your problems such as Woopra, Kissmetrics, and Owox.

Woopra is a real-time customer analytics service that provides solutions for sales, service, marketing, and product teams. It shows who are your customers, where they come from and how they interact with the website.

Kissmetrics is a behavioral analytics and engagement platform. By integrating with Ringostat, it gives more opportunities to perform SEO testing and track customers’ behavior on the website. In plain English, Kissmetrics & Ringostat integration lets find out how your callers interact with your website before and after the call.

When it comes to Owox platform, it gives an opportunity to work with big data and learn the value of each user’s session. Thanks to Owox, you may transfer information from Google Analytics and call tracking to Google BigQuery and easily analyze a large volume of data.

What you should know as a true PPC expert

• The larger volume of data you have, the more efficient advertising campaign you can create according to it.

Action Step

• Integrate Ringostat with Kissmetrics, Owox and other web analytics systems.

Wrapping Up

So take into account these golden rules of work with call tracking to get correct analytic data and efficiently optimize advertising campaigns:

• track inbound calls dividing them into the target and non-targeted;
• specify the duration of the sales cycle in Ringostat settings in order not to see repeated calls;
• analyze each advertising channel separately and integrate call tracking with CRM systems;
• optimize the time of advertising according to reports by weekdays and time of the day at Ringostat;
• analyze report on multi-channel funnels to learn about which advertising channels perform the best;
• use dynamic content substitution and A/B testing;
• use analytics systems which afford to work with a large volume of data.

Using this approach to work with call tracking services, you may become the professional, because aforementioned actions lead to efficient optimization of advertising and maximum profit of your clients.

Achieve great results and stand out from your competitors. 😉